We’ve all heard the old adage that it’s much more cost-effective to keep an existing customer than it is to sign a new customer. Well, there’s a relatively new class of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) products known as customer success / customer retention software. This class of software is similar to marketing automation software (like Pardot) in that it has tools to track and communicate with users, but it’s much more focused on the unique needs of existing customers as opposed to generating prospects and turning them into customers. Imagine analyzing user behaviour in the application, correlating it with activity data in the CRM, and making recommendations as to customers that are likely to churn (e.g. if the user doesn’t sign into the application regularly, doesn’t use the most popular features, doesn’t interact with the support or customer success teams, etc).
Here are a few vendors in the space:
- Gainsight – Retain. Grow. Transform (127 employees on LinkedIn)
- Totango – Listen. Understand. Engage. (48 employees on LinkedIn)
- Preact – Protect and grow customer revenue. (26 employees on LinkedIn)
Customer success and retention software is going to be a major category. While not as large as marketing automation, it’s a good market and will have big winners.
What else? What are some more thoughts on customer success and retention software?
David Cummings on Startups 
Very interesting and useful post – thanks!